


Lightning Rod

by AltraViolet



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Death, Depressing, Grief, M/M, POV First Person, Sad, sparkling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27570784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AltraViolet/pseuds/AltraViolet
Summary: The fecund waves of Primus ceased long ago. Mechs desiring their own sparklings bring a specialized piece of metal called a lightning rod to the old spark fields. Mirage and Skywarp go to have their own.Written quickly, more of a sketch than a fleshed-out fic, exploring a not-organic method of Cybertronian reproduction. Themes: compatibility, death, grief.
Relationships: Mirage/Skywarp (Transformers)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	Lightning Rod

The first time we knelt together on the spark field, your smile was so bright. You held my hands as the cool air touched our chests, and our plating, and then our sparks. The most intimate, private parts of us sought each other, as always, twining threads of light and life. They reached and braided and twisted, and between us, the lightning rod hummed. You laughed and squeezed my hands and I kissed you again and again.

The lightning rod flashed with our combined energy and sank beneath the metal of the planet, as it was supposed to. A little puddle of melted metal and sparklight. Our sparkling in its most basic components, ready to flourish in the spark field. We got to our feet. The caretaker nodded approvingly. I warped us home.

We got updates for a week from the caretaker. _The sparkling is strong. It was a good ignition._ Then, _we're reading a slight abnormality. Usually not anything to worry about._ Then, _the metal is sublimating away. The sparklight is too weak to hold it together. Please prepare yourselves._ And then a simple, _I'm sorry._

And how you wept. My beautiful Mirage. How you wept into your hands and my hands and the berth and the walls. I was enraged. What had happened? Who had done it! But it was no one's fault. _Failure to thrive,_ the report said. _Failure to thrive._

So we saved up and bought another lightning rod. This time the store in the good part of the city, with gold sheets hanging at the windows.

And we knelt again. Thrust the lightning rod into the ground together. This time your lips were a thin, firm line. No smiles at first, though you cannot resist my charm. It took longer for our chests to open, to separate. For us to bear our sparks to each other, to the lightning rod. But we did it. And you laughed, because when we are one, it is the greatest joy there could ever be.

The lightning rod hummed. It shook. And it collapsed into the ground.

“A strong ignition!” said the caretaker. They helped us up and told us they would be in contact. I warped us home.

_The sparkling is strong! We are impressed by all the readings._

_We're registering a slight abnormality. Usually not anything to worry about._

_The metal is draining away. The head caretaker himself dripped in a special mixture by hand. The sparklight is too weak to hold it together. Please prepare yourselves._

_I'm sorry._

You mourned, but this time there were fewer tears. Your field's sadness deepened, so thick I could cut it with a knife.

We saved up for another lightning rod.

This time we went to the highest-rated metallurgist. A short, chatty minibot. He took samples of metal from what remained of our birth frames, samples of our innermost energon, readings of our spark light. He talked and talked and talked, this and that and this and _that_ and you put a hand to my chest to calm my rising ire.

He said we weren't compatible.

“How _dare_ you!” you shouted.

He blinked and stepped back.

“You wanna try that again?” I asked between my teeth.

He held his hands up. “L- look, you've had two failed attempts, right?”

You put your arms across your chest and turned away. I made that scary noise deep in my chest, the one you don't like but that makes things happen when I want them to.

He jumped back. “I'll do my damned best! But looking at the readings- at the data- your spark types and your birth metals are so different. It'll be...” his voice trailed off. He gulped as I glared at him. “Unlikely that you'll get one that thrives.”

“What can you do about that?” I asked, low and seething.

He skittered around the shop, pulling lightning rods down from the wall, tossing them down onto soft polycloth cushions. Tubes of metal in all colors, smoothed and polished. “No, no, no... not this one... where is my? Ah.” He pulled a lightning rod, thicker than all the others, down from the wall. He had to transform his feet to reach it.

“See this?” He flipped it so that we could see the bottom. Rough-cut. Unpolished. We squinted at it. He pointed. “This one is a composite. It has a core of steel, see? And then all these layers of different metals wrapped around it. This is the most complex lightning rod ever developed. Every nutrient a sparkling could need.”

We gave him all we had.

We kneeled again, for a third time, with that thick lightning rod between us. You were weeping as your chest cracked open. My spark almost broke to see it. I touched your face, and we kissed, and we kissed, and our sparks reached for each other, and the lightning rod sang.

It melted from the inside out, making different-colored pools of metal in the ground. Concentric circles of shining steel and copper and nickel and who knows what. It glistened there, flashing with our green sparklight, and sank beneath the ground.

The caretaker knew better than to say anything about it being a strong ignition. They pulled us to our feet and said, “we will be in touch.”

You were shaking when I warped us home.

_Ignition is strong. Metals are stable._

_Metals are holding. Spark is coalescing._

Your eyes, when we got the third message. The joy in your field. The clicking of your plating as your whole body gave out exhausted relief:

_The sparkling is thriving._

We got updates every day for two weeks. The little bubble of metal formed itself into a cone. And then there was a face, with closed eyes. And then there were wings. You were so happy. You wanted it to have wings. And then there was a body, and arms and legs.

Your biolights pulsed with joy when we picked him up from the caretaker. He was so tiny. Such perfect little wings, such perfect little hands. You held him close and I held you close and we were a family, echoing our happiness in our fields.

You named him... you named him.

He toddled around. His wings flapped, his eyes opened and closed. He ate. He danced with us. He loved warping with me.

He walked. He smiled. He laughed.

He almost talked. 

He almost said your name. 

Thirteen mornings he woke us with his little sparkling burbles. But not on the fourteenth. We checked on him, praising him for finally sleeping all the way through the night. He lay, curled, in his sparkling nest, hands tucked under his chin. His tiny field was gone. The light of his eyes was out. His biolights- they had just started coming in- were dark.

He was gone.

How you screamed. How I screamed. The neighbors called for the police, who found us sobbing over him, our tears dripping down his still form, pooling in the crease of his tiny wings.

They took him. They took him and we followed and we screamed and we begged. 

_“Failure to thrive,”_ they said. And they asked us whether we wanted to have him recycled so other sparklings could benefit from his body, or have him put back into the ground, laid to rest forever.

You said you wanted to be selfish. You didn't want to share him with all the sparklings who got to live. But you knew that wasn't right and so, clenching your fists, you said he could go to help others. All save the wings. We took the wings home. 

We buried them ourselves. One each. Tiny crescents in the ground.

Every night you shake. You trace my biolights and you curse Primus. How could we be incompatible, when we have such love for each other? _How?_

We will not buy another lightning rod.

**Author's Note:**

> Usually I like my fics to be hopeful and for the characters to be happy. I thought of this last night when I couldn't sleep. It felt a lot sadder than what's here, I think. It's not what I want for them, but I like the lightning rod idea enough to write it out.
> 
> Might write this out longer sometime in the far future.


End file.
